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Wednesday December 7, 2005
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 Cingular finally launched their high-speed HSDPA network yesterday; for the details, check out Carmen Nobel's story on eWeek.com. In brief, the network provides broadband wireless speeds in 16 cities using either of two PC Cards for your laptop. The cards will cost $99 with a two-year contract, and unlimited access will cost $59.99/month if you're a Cingular voice subscriber. This brings Cingular on par with Verizon and Sprint in terms of speed, if not high-speed coverage. I was listening in on Cingular's conference call too, and here's what Carmen couldn't fit in: - On average, Cingular's HSDPA system will deliver the same 400-700 kbps speeds as Verizon and Sprint's EVDO. Though HSDPA can briefly burst to 3.6 mbps as compared to EVDO's maximum burst of 2.4 mbps, current HSDPA cards are limited to 1.8 mbps. Translation: Cingular, Verizon and Sprint are now all on an equal footing for speed.
- The big differentiator here for consumers is that Cingular's network allows videophone calling, where Verizon and Sprint's networks don't.
- Handsets will show up early next year, but I'm now perplexed as to which handsets they'll be. Cingular just committed to high-speed HSDPA on both the 850 and 1900 frequency bands. I've seen four potential next-generation Cingular phones, but three of them use mid-speed UMTS, not high-speed HSDPA, and some are missing the 850 band. Will Cingular actually release next-generation phones that only use half of their network's speed, and don't work well in some US cities? The mind boggles.
- Cingular's legacy networks and the AT&T merger are still huge albatrosses. Just last week they finished merging the Cingular and AT&T TDMA networks - yes, that's TDMA, the ancient technology they're trying to get rid of! They've also only merged the AT&T and Cingular GSM networks in 30 out of 63 US markets. The good news is, once they merge a city, call quality goes up by 20% and dropped calls go down by 30%.
- Want to know why they really upgraded? The new network lets them carry much more voice traffic and cuts down on their operating costs. It's a lot more efficient. And hey, saving money is just as good as making it.
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